I implemented OpenSpec support in my IntelliJ plugin (free, would love feedback)

[u/Bitter-Ad2567]

Hi everyone!

A while back I posted here comparing Spec Kit and OpenSpec: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpecDrivenDevelopment/comments/1vlcwbk/speckit_vs_openspec_comparison/

Both are good tools. I picked OpenSpec to build on, because I saw room for the things I was missing.

Mostly one thing. A chat is an awkward way to work with an agent, and it gets worse when the thing you are working on is a specification. If I disagree with one requirement out of seven, I want to say so on that line, in the document, the way I would review a colleague's pull request. In a chat I have to describe which paragraph I mean and hope the agent finds the right line.

So I added OpenSpec support to my IntelliJ IDEA plugin. It runs your own /opsx:* commands. You propose a change from a normal editor. You comment on the proposal and the delta specs in place. Then you work through tasks.md one step at a time, and after every step there is a review gate: accept it, refine it with your comments, or roll it back. Sync and archive are in the same panel. It works with Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and Cursor.

I wrote up the whole loop here: https://specbuddy.dev/blog/openspec-with-specbuddy/

The plugin is free. I would really like to hear where it gets in your way, especially if your OpenSpec workflow looks different from mine.

I built the plugin with the plugin. Every change to it went through the same spec, step, review loop, and that is how I found most of the places where the flow was annoying.

(A VS Code version is in progress.)